Kyogre Counters by the Weather

A Reddit user RyanoftheDay has analyzed how the weather will affect the counters of Kyogre. Here is his analysis:

When you look at Hydro Pump, Thunder, or the average of all movesets, it only looks like Clear and Rainy weather really affect the results. However, if you take a closer look at how weather influences Blizzard Kyogre counters you’ll find a handful of Pokemon rising up! Since Blizzard is by far Kyogre’s hardest moveset, he decided to highlight some of these counters on my Blizzard graph.

Counters by the Weather

Cloudy: Machamp, Hariyama, Blaziken, and Poliwrath made the biggest impressions here. Heracross is alright but fails to impress. An important thing to note is if Machamp doesn’t have perfect defense IVs, HP IVs, and is at 40 it will fail to be as impressive as displayed, being unable to survive 3 Waterfalls and a Blizzard. Hariyama has this swag at level 31.5 and can tank 1 more Waterfall even at level 38 (the average before Blizzard being 4).

Rain: Kyogre and Laturn rise from the depths of being “too slow to rate” with the rain boost. Level 29 is the significant attack breakpoint for Kyogre here. Lanturn isn’t as touchy, but level 29 and 36 are her defensive breakpoints. I only chose to highlight Zapdos and Jolteon from the glass cannon bunch, but Manectric and Magneton also stand up in rain (and are still behind the ultra-common Jolteon). I also only included Raikou at its level 29.5 bulkpoint; if I went any higher he’d warp the graph and squish everyone together even more than he already does.

Clear: Many Pokemon get a DPS boost in the sun. For the sake of not making the graph more busy than it already is, I chose to only include the Pokemon I felt were the most notable. Ho-oh and Ludicolo ascend from being slow but tanky options to very good tanky options. Sceptile, having the most powerful Leaf Blade jumps up as well. Note that no Grass-type will climb any higher than Sceptile and all still risk fainting before launching Solar Beam. This boost to Sceptile also makes the small survivability gains Groudon has over other Pokemon looks smaller from both a DPS and TDO perspective.

Foggy: If you didn’t expect Tyranitar to show up in the fog – always expect Tyranitar to show up in the fog. It’s worth noting that only Shadow Claw Gengar impresses in the Fog. Mewtwo also has some slight gains here, but I chose not to clutter the graph with the salt Pokemon’s niche performance.

Windy: I originally wasn’t going to include windy, but double-dragon Gyarados popped up with some Lanturn-tier tank swag. Dragon Tail Groudon and Extrasensory Ho-Oh both have some slight gains here, but I didn’t feel they were worth including; similar with Mewtwo.

Snow/Partly Cloudy: No Pokemon received a notable benefit from these weather forms.

Note on Bulkpoints

Bulkpoints are something that has been glazed over lightly in previous raids but are central in the Kyogre fight. A bulk point is a minimum level at which your Pokemon has enough defense and HP to survive a number of fast moves and 1 charge move. Since they are specific to both your defense and HP IV, you will want to use this tool to easily identify them. When you use the calculator, bulk points become self-explanatory.

If you get an output that is greater than 7, then you’re entering “complicated bulkpoint” territory. At this point, you will want to use Pokebattler’s raid advice feature (or start crunching some numbers) if you want to know where significant survivability gains are. These “complicated bulkpoints” will be met at areas where the “Power” has a notable gain. In order to use “raid advice,” you have to set up a Pokebox, which is pretty easy and completely free.